Fantaësie Gothaëca
II—The Tempest Underground
Chapter III—Géronte
Faust had stopped us in front of one of the tall narrow houses. The door rose at the top of three narrow steps, little parcel tied in a pink satin boy lying on the topmost step. Faust picked it up, and then lifted the heavy iron ring that hung between the jagged teeth of a rusted turtle—or so it seemed anyway. The ring made loud contact with an iron nail under it, and the deep resounding sound of iron on iron resonated between the walls of houses. A few doors further down the tunnel, a window opened, and a girl flung her whole upper body out among the folds of thick pink curtains, long curling silver hair trailing down around her pale heart-shaped face. Artfully rosy lips opened to let out a cry:
'Faust! You went without me!'
Faust started and looked around guiltily. He opened his mouth the reply to the withering accusation, but the girl went out murderously;
'And who is this—person?'
'She's a lost lady I found wandering in the tunnels!' Faust cried back with the innocence of youth.
'So you have to make yourself obliging for every lost young lady you meet, yes?' there, the enraged adolescent burst into theatrical tears, and flung herself back among pink folds, slamming the windows shut on her disappearance.
'Laylabelle!' Faust cried tragically.
'What—Faust—crying at a young lady's window—how very ungentlemanly!' came a reproving voice, surprisingly close, and both Faust and I jumped back. I caught myself on the wrought iron railing which stood on my side of the steps, unfortunately Faust did not have such luck, so, to avoid tripping embarrassingly down the steps, he grabbed a great handful of my shirt. It ripped open, he let it go as though it had burnt him, fell embarrassingly down the steps, jumped back up to his feet, and I flung a slap in his face.
'You cad!' I yelled at him, looking at the ripped seam gaping open down my left side.
'I say—Faust—zounds!—how very shocking!'
I looked up. The man who had spoken raised a monocle to his pale grey eyes and squinted at me. He was dressed in an elegant velvet outfit, an azure waistcoat embroidered in silver covering his torso, and an immaculate white neck cloth folded neatly around his stiff collar. His pale brown hair hung in limp strands over dizzyingly tall forehead—he could not have been older than early twenty, and he acted, spoke and held himself in ways very much similar to some man I very difficultly recall, but who might have taught me a language. Latin was in the realms of the possibility. Possibly.
'Victor—it's not at all what you're thinking!' Faust said tragically, rubbing his satisfyingly crimson cheek.
'It's exactly what he's thinking!' cried a voice muffled in pink curtains from a short distance away.
'I say…' Victor sighed, blinking at me, 'who may you be, gentle youth?'
'She's Fantaësie. I found her in the tunnels. She was lost. She wants to get back up, so I brought her here to see uncle,' Faust informed to peculiar monocled man hastily.
'Fantaësie. What a beauteous name….' he nodded, smiling faintly at me, 'pray do enter my humble abode. My father shall be with you in the shortest period of time humanly achievable.'
Victor stepped aside, letting the door open for me to walk through. I cast one last withering look at Faust and entered.
Inside, I found myself in a narrow corridor. The walls were painted in a subdued dark purple colour, faint-looking paintings of faint people doing things in excessively faint ways hung from nails, and a little glossy wooden table stood in a corner beside the door, covered in vases of flowers that looked more like a graveyard for deceased amarate than anything else. Two doors stood at each side of the corridor, and a narrow staircase covered in a grey carpet led to an upper floor. Victor, letting his monocle fall down to dangle from the chain around his neck, opened a door and led me inside a room that was so full of books even the sound of the nailed soles of my boots against the worn wooden planks of the floor was muffled.
'Pray be seated,' Victor said, waving a pianist's faded thin hand to a little cluster of mismatched and worn chair and armchairs that stood around a short table covered in empty mugs, 'Quant à vous, Faust,' he said in a strange barbaric-sounding language I did not recognise, but visibly addressed to Faust, 'il vous faut recevoir une bonne leçon de morale. Nous en parlerons avec mon père, n'ayez craintes.'1
Faust collapsed into the folds of a lavishly cushioned armchair, looking terror-struck. Victor left, shutting the door behind him.
'What the Broken Glass Factory did he just say?' I asked with sumptuous imperiousness.
'Um,' Faust replied.
'What a brilliantly spirited retort,' I snapped, and crossed my arms over my chest and sat myself down.
I read the titles of the books which were piled pell-mell on wooden and iron shelves, but understood none: 'Théorie Des Mystères,' 'Un Rêve Pour Un Nuage,' 'Fonction du Mal—Les Conjectures Pourpres,' 'Philosophie d'une Plume d'Opium,' 'Orphelins et Apocalypse—Une Supposition,' 'Sept Secrets et un Ravage,' 'Donne Moi ton Âme, Car j'En Ai Besoin,' 'Dites-le Avec Conviction,' 'Les Jupons de la Virtue,' 'Suppositions et Suggestions de L'Enfer,' 'Les Baisers de Givres'2…
'Ah, for the love of Sat—this leg will be the death of me, I am certain of it!'
The door slammed upon, the shock sending several books tumbling down from a shelf. The man who had just entered, however, did not bother to pick them up. Leaning heavily on a beautiful black and white cane, he jerked his way towards Faust and I, dragging a leg behind him, his pale eyes magnified to frightening proportions by a pair of ludicrously thick iron-framed oval glasses. He wore subdued, worn, dirty black clothes, but at his belt, showing through the lapels of his frock-coat hung a key ring made of thick perfect silver, so overcharged with keys of all sizes and shapes and colours that they did not even clink together, so tightly packed they were. I wondered what they opened. I resolved to find out and steal it. Or them. Whatever it was those magnificently numerous keys guarded anyway...
'Faust—son! I've heard you've been a very bad boy again…' the man grunted as he threw himself onto an armchair with the force of an unstoppable cannonball.
Faust threw a murderous look to Victor, who'd appeared behind the limping, fantastic man of the keys, and then cried in protest:
'Uncle! It wasn't at all what Victor supposed! He lied purposefully to you!'
'Never has or shall a lie pass the threshold of my lips!' Victor announced with a saintliness worthy of any saint in a young Faded's depressing panoply.
'By Sat and the Four Seasons! What an interesting specimen we have here!' the man with the keys explained, slashing his attention down upon me with a suddenness that threw Faust completely off-balance. It did not have the same effect upon me, of course, and I remained totally calm and cool as the man squinted and stared at me.
'Her name is Fantaësie, Uncle,' Faust, mortified and pink as Lady Alcha's hair, whispered.
'Fantaësie—what a perfectly delightful name. If I'm not mistaken it is was a Celestial Ruin…or was it a star-flower? I somehow cannot remember—Victor, as-tu une idée?'3
'I cannot say I have, Father,' Victor replied to his father's barbaric enquiry.
'I beg your pardon,' I addressed the man of the keys with as much respect as I felt all those keys owed, 'but what is this strange language you speak?'
'It is the language of Evaniae—though very few people still now it. A beautiful, very complex language I am afraid. We call it Hectorian.'
'Hectorian!' I said, digging inside myself for information.
I knew I most have known about it, though I could not remember—for my memory was of the capricious kind when it was in a mood…
'How interesting. And are all those books written in Hectorian then?'
I gestured to the walls of every-which-way books.
'Absolutely—absolutely! You should learn—for know that the world's greatest mysteries have been pierced with the help of Hectorian.'
'I thought—' I said carefully, 'that they had been pierced with the help of Latin?'
'Latin is but a rougher version of the finest of languages.'
Hearing this, I immediately resolved to find Father Pikehart (whose name and function suddenly sprung back to my memory—much to my surprise obviously,) and engage a conversation between those two doubtlessly cerebrally crazed men.
'May I make so bold as to enquire after the existence of those beautiful keys I see?' I then asked, with as much discretion as I had mastered earlier in my cross-examination of Faust's knowledge of the Duchess Emmerwick of Clawe's astoundingly beautiful magic necklace.
'You may!' the man boomed out, 'but only just after we have been perfectly introduced!'
There, he heaved himself with what looked like tremendous difficulty, and wheezed:
'Faust—do us the honour, son!'
Faust shook his head with rodently exasperation, and said:
'Miss Fantaësie, meet my Uncle, Géronte Arnolphe des Trissotins.'
'Sweet Damsel. Enchanted to make your acquaintance!'
Géronte Arnolphe des Trissotins touched an invisible hat, and then took my hand and bowed over it.
'I must be introduced too!' Victor cried, advancing as hastily as he could (which was slower than a snail trying to loose a race) and holding his monocle to his eyes with seemed to be something close to despair.
'Miss Fantaësie,' Faust said, looking, to my great pleasure, miserable, 'let me introduce you to my cousin… Victor Flavien des Quaies.'
'Lady! It's an honour!'
Victor imitated his father, and then drew back.
'I seem to have gathered that you have lost yourself amongst us, dear demoiselle?' Géronte des Trissotins said amiably, before adding sotto voce to Victor: 'Call for Louisellia and ask her to bring some refreshments—et ne te perds pas dans ses jupons, poète au front delicat!'4 he added in the beautiful language of Hectorian.
Whatever he said in this foreign tongue had a strange effect on Victor: he blushed profoundly, flustered, and stammered out:
'Mais—mon père—je ne—mon père!'5
'Vas!'6 the man of the keys said imperiously, giving his son a self-satisfied grin. Victor flew out with broken wings.
'Well. Where were we. Yes. So. At any rate. Pray quiz me as much as you will, for I am at your entire disposition!' he nodded his head at me.
'Um, I thank you very much for your help. May I enquire as to where we are—exactly,' I added, as Faust, looking increasingly annoyed and upset, opened his mouth indignantly.
'Aah…well, technically, we are simply underground. This whole city is only known through hear-says and legends back up on the surface of the BGF. They call it the Underworld, Underground, Tartarus…but it's all tattletales from gossip-thirsty noblewomen…we call it Asphodael—our little private joke,' Géronte chuckled darkly, 'but it really has no name—only we have. Obviously, nobody up there knows our real name—they call us the Morlock (petits imbéciles!) the Damned, the Spectres, and even sometimes we are known as 'Soul.' Apparently a spoilt Engineer's daughter came up with the idea of us being all the rejected souls Mage Ekt refused to use for Sat, so we—that is all the supposedly rejected souls, merged into one ultimately evil soul. Soul. Ha-ha. Women are lucky they're pretty, or else they'd be dead—they're so stupid.'
I rose at that. Keys or no keys, this was taking things a bit too far. My respect could not be stretch this much. I may loathe the feminine sex, but the masculine sex isn't much better, therefore they have no right—and I shall repeat—no right whatsoever to criticize, let alone insult it. I gathered myself majestically out of my chair, and walked out of the room, slamming straight into Victor, who let go of his monocle and grabbed my shoulders in order not to fall. I knew he thought he was steadying me, but obviously I would not have fallen without his help, much on the contrary—he would fallen without my help.
'I demand that you take me out of this place immediately!' I told him.
'I say!' he said, 'I say—what, may I enquire—has slapped upon they cheek these cumuli nimbuses of dawn-pink?'
'Very well! If you will not let me out of here, I shall let myself out!'
And with all the dignity I could muster, I grandly exited this ignoble house. I am quite sure the fact that I tripped over the steps and nearly fell did not spoil the effect whatsoever. It happens to everyone to trip, even the best of us…
'Zounds!—by all the mirages of Phoenix Fields—I say! Quel comportement étrange chez une si faible demoiselle!' the faint cry reached my ears as I turned around a corner.
'Now—now! Miss Fantaësie! My Uncle did not mean what he said! Please come back and have some tea!'
'You! Leave me alone—tyke!' I flung over my shoulder at the puffing and huffing, ridiculously mouse-like Faust, 'lest I should sink my fist in your abominably hideous face!'
After that—I was left alone. I did not hear anyone call me, and nobody ran after me. I did not feel disappointed at all by this, I can assure you—on the contrary—I am quite sure that peculiar feeling was nothing more than the glow of triumph within my soul. Ere while, I sat myself down on a tiny flight of stairs, just beside a thin, flat wooden box reading the inscription: 'Fraught—let silver be torn.' I wondered what it meant exactly, for it seemed to me to hold the sort of beautiful complexity you often countered in the admirable craft of poetry, but try as I might, I could not open the box. So as not to loose any prestige or pride, I erased any proof that I had tried—and looked around, feeling mourn, and quite wishing Chrono were with me. I looked down to reach for him inside my bags—and realise that I didn't have them anymore.
Artist's Comment
1 'As for you, Faust, you need to receive a good lesson of morals. We shall discuss it with my father, fear not.'
2 'Theory of Mysteries,' 'A Dream for a Cloud,' 'Functions of Evil—The Crimson Conjectures,' 'Philosophy of a Feather of Opium,' 'Orphans and Apocalypse—A Supposition,' 'Seven Secrets and A Ravage,' 'Give Me Thy Soul, For a Need It,' 'Say It With Conviction,' 'The Petticoats of Virtue,' 'Suppositions and Suggestions of Haell,' 'The Frost Kisses.'
3 'Victor, have you an idea?'
4 'And do not loose yourself in her petticoats, poet of the delicate brow!'
5 'But—Father—I do not—Father!'
6 'Go!'
